Neuro-Computational Foundations of Moral Preferences

Variance, norms and cooperative behavior in public goods games

This study examines the relationship between the variance of others' contributions, social norms (empirical and normative expectations), and cooperative behavior using a classic linear public goods game. The following results are observed. First, the variance of a participant's group members' contributions had a negative impact on their contributions, empirical expectations, and normative expectations. Second, deviations from the mean, whether negative or positive, were deemed less socially appropriate. Third, while there was a strong relationship between variance, social norms, and cooperative behavior, the mediating effect of social norms was found to be insignificant. Finally, there were some notable findings regarding behavior type. Although free riders and cooperators exhibited distinct behavioral patterns, their normative expectations were similar. Free riders expected others to cooperate, but their empirical expectations were significantly lower than cooperators' expectations, which were aligned with their actual contributions. These findings contribute to research on the relationship between distribution heterogeneity, social norms and cooperative behavior. Furthermore, these findings provide valuable insights into management practices.

Health involvement modulates physician preference in the brain during online health consultation

In traditional offline health-seeking behavior, patients consistently exhibit a preference for similar types of physicians due to limited access to physicians' information. Nevertheless, with the advent of online health consultation platforms offering comprehensive physicians' information for patients, raises the question: do patients continue to exhibit uniform preference for physicians? To address this issue, we first employed a behavioral experiment to discern patients' preferences for different types of physicians' information under different health involvement, and then conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment to furnish neural/physiological evidence. The results showed that health involvement modulates patients' preferences, when health involvement was low, patients had diverse preferences for physicians, that is, different types of physicians' information could individually impact patients' choice and could serve as substitutes for each other. When health involvement was high, patients' preference for physicians were uniform, highlighting that the collective influence of different types of physicians' information on patients' choice behavior. From the neural level, an explanation for the results was that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and ventral striatum (VS) brain regions, two key brain regions reflecting individual cognitive resource allocation, had different activation levels under different health involvement, indicating that patients allocated different cognitive resources.

The Implications of Moral Neuroscience for Brain Disease: Review and Update

The last 2 decades have seen an explosion of neuroscience research on morality, with significant implications for brain disease. Many studies have proposed a neuromorality based on intuitive sentiments or emotions aimed at maintaining collaborative social groups. These moral emotions are normative, deontological, and action based, with a rapid evaluation of intentionality. The neuromoral circuitry interacts with the basic mechanisms of socioemotional cognition, including social perception, behavioral control, theory of mind, and social emotions such as empathy. Moral transgressions may result from primary disorders of moral intuitions, or they may be secondary moral impairments from disturbances in these other socioemotional cognitive mechanisms. The proposed neuromoral system for moral intuitions has its major hub in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and engages other frontal regions as well as the anterior insulae, anterior temporal lobe structures, and right temporoparietal junction and adjacent posterior superior temporal sulcus. Brain diseases that affect these regions, such as behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia, may result in primary disturbances of moral behavior, including criminal behavior. Individuals with focal brain tumors and other lesions in the right temporal and medial frontal regions have committed moral violations. These transgressions can have social and legal consequences for the individuals and require increased awareness of neuromoral disturbances among such individuals with brain diseases.

A Common Neural Account for Social and Nonsocial Decisions

To date, social and nonsocial decisions have been studied largely in isolation. Consequently, the extent to which social and nonsocial forms of decision uncertainty are integrated using shared neurocomputational resources remains elusive. Here, we address this question using simultaneous electroencephalography (EEG)-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in healthy human participants (young adults of both sexes) and a task in which decision evidence in social and nonsocial contexts varies along comparable scales. First, we identify time-resolved build-up of activity in the EEG, akin to a process of evidence accumulation (EA), across both contexts. We then use the endogenous trial-by-trial variability in the slopes of these accumulating signals to construct parametric fMRI predictors. We show that a region of the posterior-medial frontal cortex (pMFC) uniquely explains trial-wise variability in the process of evidence accumulation in both social and nonsocial contexts. We further demonstrate a task-dependent coupling between the pMFC and regions of the human valuation system in dorso-medial and ventro-medial prefrontal cortex across both contexts. Finally, we report domain-specific representations in regions known to encode the early decision evidence for each context. These results are suggestive of a domain-general decision-making architecture, whereupon domain-specific information is likely converted into a "common currency" in medial prefrontal cortex and accumulated for the decision in the pMFC.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Little work has directly compared social-versus-nonsocial decisions to investigate whether they share common neurocomputational origins. Here, using combined electroencephalography (EEG)-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and computational modeling, we offer a detailed spatiotemporal account of the neural underpinnings of social and nonsocial decisions. Specifically, we identify a comparable mechanism of temporal evidence integration driving both decisions and localize this integration process in posterior-medial frontal cortex (pMFC). We further demonstrate task-dependent coupling between the pMFC and regions of the human valuation system across both contexts. Finally, we report domain-specific representations in regions encoding the early, domain-specific, decision evidence. These results suggest a domain-general decision-making architecture, whereupon domain-specific information is converted into a common representation in the valuation system and integrated for the decision in the pMFC.